


i know who i want to take me home (take me home)

by frozensight



Series: a whole new world (literally) [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5729992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozensight/pseuds/frozensight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One time Bucky needed to carry Steve, one time Steve wanted to carry Bucky, and one time Bucky carried Steve without knowing why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know who i want to take me home (take me home)

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: You give me a piggy back ride (or ride home) after I got out of a brutal fight and can barely stand.
> 
> notes: there was more, but it all deviated from the original prompt a bit much so i said nah and kept it simple

When they were kids, it was always Bucky who carried Steve home after a fight. He was always the one to save Steve’s ass when he got in too deep, opened his mouth at just the wrong time, or just in general, pissed off someone bigger than him. 

“You should really pick on someone your own size, Steve,” he’d say to him, carrying his best friend on his back. 

“He only had a few inches on me,” Steve would mutter back, his head resting on Bucky’s shoulder, where depending on how long the fight had gone on before Bucky intervened, Steve would sometimes be breathing haggardly as his asthma tried to kick in. He never complained about his injuries though, even when he’d have blood trickling into his eye from a forehead cut. No, instead he’d just grouch about how Bucky stopped him before he was done. 

Bucky would snort, shifting so that he had a better hold of Steve, and reply, “Yeah, a few inches and a _hundred pounds_. You could’ve gotten seriously hurt.” 

“I had it under control, Buck; I’m telling you—I had’im on the ropes.” 

“ _Sure_ you did, pal.” 

But as much as Bucky gave Steve crap about getting into fights, he wouldn’t want Steve to be any other way. There was something kinda inspiring about this scrawny, sickly man believing so fiercely in things that he didn’t let his physical limitations define him. In a lot of ways, Bucky looked up to Steve, for all that his height made him look down on him. 

\------ 

Thanks to the serum, Bucky didn’t have to carry Steve on his back after a fight anymore. It hit Bucky as Steve helped him out of the Hydra base, that if anything, Steve would be the one carrying Bucky now. It was a weird notion, Bucky thought, not being the bigger of the two, but Steve laughed it off like it was nothing when Bucky finally mentioned it to him. 

“As I see it, Buck, now I can repay you for all the years you carried me home.” He’d grin and Bucky couldn’t stop himself from grinning back. Steve was just like that—if he did something, then you immediately wanted to do it too, whether it was grinning or beating up Hydra agents. 

It felt like letting Steve down when his hand didn’t stretch far enough to do more than brush Steve’s fingers. He got a glimpse of Steve’s expression before he fell too far and too fast to register it, and all he’d seen in that moment was that kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t stay out of trouble. His last thought as James Buchanan Barnes was how he would’ve followed that kid to the ends of the earth, if only God had let him. 

\------ 

He didn’t have a name. Vaguely he was aware that people called him ‘The Winter Soldier,’ but those who gave orders only referred to him as ‘the asset.’ The only things he ever remembered were who he was to take orders from, and why his left arm was always so heavy, though the reason for the metal arm was unknown. He used to ask, but he stopped when there was never a consistent answer. 

Boating accident. Gangrene. Severe burns. It didn’t take much to realize that they were hiding the truth of his metal arm from him, but he didn’t let it bother him. He only wondered in the brief moments before and after he’d sleep, otherwise he was too focused on the mission to be bothered with such a petty thing as curiosity. 

He didn’t sleep during missions—mostly because he associated sleep as a reward for when the mission was done, but also because he _couldn’t_ —and maybe that was why sometimes when walking through crowds, he’d stop and stare at a blonde man who had a child on their back, or why his right hand flexed every time he saw a white five pointed star on a blue background. He mentioned it once to his handler before going to sleep, which led to his handler and the doctor who helped him sleep having a hushed conversation. He didn’t catch most of it, but he did hear something about a Captain who’d been missing since ’45. 

He expected them to erase that from his memory, as they did with information about every mission—something about plausible deniability, though he never saw that as a problem for himself because how could you admit to anything when you don’t have a name?—but they didn’t erase those moments. Instead they told him that those reactions were because that man, the Captain, was an old enemy, that if ever he saw the man in the picture they showed him, he had special orders to drop his current mission and kill his old enemy. 

He agreed, glad they weren’t going to take more of his mind from them than they already had. 

He went to sleep in 1999. The next time he woke up, they told him it was 2014, and that his time had come—his old enemy had surfaced and the order for his death had come from the very top of their organization. He accepted the file with the information and photographs wordlessly. The face of the man didn’t strike a chord of recognition in him, but he couldn’t stop himself from growing tense at the sight of the five-pointed star on his chest. 

\------ 

After he dragged the man to the shore, he couldn’t help but stand there, staring at him for a while. The man knew him, knew who he was before the missions and the killing and the cold sleeps, and while it was a relief to know that _someone_ knew who he was, it was also terrifying to admit that he had become something different than what he was supposed to be. 

So he'd saved his life, and hoped that was what this Bucky would've done. 


End file.
